Nearly 15 years ago, the manager of my bookshop gave me an advance reading copy of a first novel and said I had to read it. He had good taste (which means he shared my own), so I went and read “Slow Motion Riot” by Peter Blauner.

Oh, boy. I mean, oboyoboyoboy. It shook me. The suspenseful narrative was filled with memorable and explosive characters, so believable I knew I’d gone to school with at least three of them. I couldn’t believe it was a first novel.

I wanted to meet the author and suggested we try to get him to come to the store to sign a bunch of books for us. We both knew it was something special. We could force copies into the hands of customers who would later express gratitude, as well as amazement at our genius.

Fortunately, the young author (he was 32 then, in 1991) lived in New York, because we had to ask him to return several times to sign more and more copies.The following year, “Slow Motion Riot” won the Edgar for Best First Mystery.

I thought Mr. Blauner would surely become a huge best seller but, when his next book, “Casino Moon,” came out three years later, I wasn’t crazy about it. I don’t think too many others were, either. It seemed to me I’d read the story – about gambling and boxing and some guy wanting to go straight to get away from his mobster family – at least a couple of times before. Nothing wrong with it – just nothing special.

Then came “The Intruder,” which slapped my face. It was a brilliant social commentary, a brilliant character analysis, a brilliant suspense novel. John Gates, a homeless man, has decided that Jacob Schiff, a successful lawyer, has the life that he deserved and that Schiff somehow took it from him.

When Gates begins to stalk Schiff and his family, it becomes clear he is a genuine psychopath. Schiff decides he must do something about it. As we come to know both of these searing figures, the lines between stalker and stalkee get a little fuzzy, and we are caught up in a contemporary “Tale of Two Cities.” No surprise, then, that Mr. Blauner’s third novel made the New York Times best-seller list.

“Man of the Hour” and “The Last Good Day” followed, each different from any of the books that preceded them yet imbued with the author’s stylistic excellence. Which brings me to his latest, “Slipping Into Darkness” (Little, Brown, 386 pages, $24.95), possibly the best of them all, which truly takes a bit of doing.

Francis Loughlin is a cop who, 20 years earlier, arrested and helped to convict Julian (generally known as Hoolian) Vega of the especially brutal murder of a pretty young doctor who worked with children. Julian was a 17-year-old boy who looked like an inno cent 12-year-old when he was arrested for the crime; he is essentially still a boy in a man’s body when, on the technicality that his lawyer was incompetent, he is released.

The victim’s family is outraged and so is Loughlin, who swears he’ll put him back behind bars. Julian’s new lawyer tells him he merely has to plead guilty, and he’ll be set free, having served 20 years of his 25 years-tolife sentence. He refuses, maintaining his innocence, and reiterates the charges that the policeman framed him.Then another attractive young female doctor also is brutally murdered and blood is discovered under her fingernails. The DNA is a perfect match – not to Julian, but to the first murder victim.

This is definitely a good setup, as close to an impossible crime situation as the modern realistic mystery novel will allow. It made me want to know how it gets worked out. But far more interesting are the parallel stories of these two lives, Julian’s and the policeman’s, and the metaphorical divergence of their respective futures. The ex-con, set free after being behind bars for every one of his adult years, has a life opening up for him, while Loughlin is going blind and knows his days are becoming more and more limited.

My favorite mystery writers are poets: writers who see and describe people, places, and emotions in a way that is both original and accurate. Mr. Blauner ranks with the best. He depicts a junkie drug dealer as “a dude with cornrows and a build like a dislocated middle finger.” When he describes the coming of autumn, he sees “a sugar maple burst to life … as gaudy as a Moulin Rouge cancan dancer tossing her petticoats.”When a suspiciouslooking Julian walks past an upscale apartment building, the doorman watches him “with eyes like slits in a gun turret.”

Mr. Blauner did research, talking to cops and to cons who had spent at least 20 years in jail, asking one what the major difference was between now and when he was sent away. “White people can dance now,” he replied. After college, the author worked for Pete Hamill and had other journalistic gigs, which helped to give him a sharp eye. The prose style may have a fine-tuned feel, but it also had to be a gift from the beginning, because I don’t think anyone can be taught to write this well.

All of Mr. Blauner’s books are promoted as “thrillers” or “novels of suspense.”That’s not inaccurate. Like all the very best books in the genre, however, they are a great deal more. The skeleton of the plot won’t get you physically aroused; it’s all about how it’s fleshed out. Five hundred years from now, the skeletons of Marilyn Monroe and Lillian Hellman won’t look all that different, either, but fill in the flesh and we’re talking apples and ugly fruit.

It is possible you’ll read a better mystery this year.You won’t read a better novel.

Mr. Penzler is the proprietor of the Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan and the series editor of the annual “Best American Mystery Stories.” He can be reached at ottopenzler@mysteriousbookshop.com.